This is a false straight-line projection of a future that will never happen. We used to worry that the world would run out of food in the 1970s or get giddy with anticipation that the Dow Jones index would reach 30,000. We used to call these “Malthusian projections” — false expectations that the past would look like the future, that human beings and technology couldn’t figure out different ways to do things.

When in fact medicare is perfectly sustainable, and all those tools want is to give Big Medicon the green light to turn human misery into profit. Just like David Cameron's Con Lib coalition is trying to do in Britain.

A senior adviser to David Cameron says the NHS could be improved by charging patients and will be transformed into a "state insurance provider, not a state deliverer" of care.

Mark Britnell, who was appointed to a "kitchen cabinet" advising the prime minister on reforming the NHS, told a conference of executives from the private sector that future reforms would show "no mercy" to the NHS and offer a "big opportunity" to the for-profit sector.

And the teabaggers are trying to do in the United States. Where war is freedom, medicare is slavery.

"If I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to healthcare, you have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free healthcare would be," Paul said.

Anyway, the truth is that older Americans really should fear Republican budget ideas — and not just because of that plan to dismantle Medicare. Given the realities of the federal budget, a party insisting that tax increases of any kind are off the table — as John Boehner, the speaker of the House, says they are — is, necessarily, a party demanding savage cuts in programs that serve older Americans.

Yup.The Con war on medicare is now a global one. Anyone who thinks it can't happen here is dreaming.

Anyone who thinks that an ideologue like Stephen Harper won't get involved in this war is delusional.